The Uncertainty of Gray
by Krista Lauren
Summary: In a run down apartment in the center of the city they would meet night after night, deceiving themselves and their teammates while they fought for their own little sanctuary. Omi just never thought doubt would be the thing to tear them apart.


Fevered kisses, crushed bodies, tangled limbs. A perfect picture of passion, longing, and desire. Omi held on tight to the feeling overwhelming him, afraid that if he loosened his grip at all, the whole thing would wash away. Leave him like everything else in his life, alone and crying in the darkness because there was nothing. He didn't want that. Now that he had Nagi, now that something in his life was going the way he wanted, he wasn't about to let it slide through his fingertips.

Fingers dug deeper into the others shoulders as another wave of pleasure crashed over him, sending him reeling and begging for more. It was heaven with Nagi, the pure antagonistic longing of time being stripped from his body and leaving him open and vulnerable. Being with Nagi…just closed the gap that he'd been feeling and fighting to bridge from the beginning.. It could never be like this with anyone else. No one else could understand how important it was to pretend, to forget. No one else could accept him for what he was. How can anyone but a murderer truly understand the minds of the condemned?

"Nagi…please…"

Little moans, choked sobs, whispered names spiraling together into a frenzy of noise, like some odd kind of music to the ears. It was him and it was Nagi, composing their own symphony. It was the rustle of discarded sheets. It was the way the moonlight streamed into the window and rose a sheen from the world. Was sex supposed to be this beautiful? Omi was too caught up in the rapture to care.

When he comes, Nagi deep inside him, the earth splits. There's no worry of heaven or hell, where he'll end up. Just a blinding white light that tears away his sins. There's nothing to remember, no past to fill in. Only white… It only lasts for a few precious seconds, but just to be free for that little time is what keeps him coming back here every night, lying and pretending that he's out with friends. Is Nagi a friend? Is he? He doesn't know what Nagi gets out of this. His silence is so deafening sometimes that it scares him.

Because sometimes Omi thinks he loves Nagi.

And sometimes he thinks that Nagi could care less.

What a wonderful thing doubt is.

It was always fast with them. All about what they needed and not what they could get. There wasn't time for that. Not when any minute Omi's teammates could come crashing through the door, or Nagi's guardians would pick something out of one of their minds. Always the risk. And yet they continued to take it.

Nagi was usually the first to leave this place they'd made, gathering up the rumpled and torn clothes, straightening them out as much as possible. Omi would watch, taking in the pale fingers as the did the buttons, pushed the wrinkles from the pants. Nagi never used his powers around Omi. It brought up memories of what they would be doing when they met next, not alone but with a group behind them, where they'd be forced to try and kill. Back to the game, back to the risk.

But today Nagi lies still, his breathing even beside Omi, hand still tangled in his. Omi knows him well enough to know he isn't asleep, but thinking, and Omi can almost hear the wheels of his brain turning. Nagi knows how dangerous it is to just lie like this, and so whatever he's thinking must be important.

"Omi…" His eyes are open now, and boring into Omi's, the street light outside the rundown room casting just enough light to see that Nagi has that look in his eyes. The look Omi first saw when he met Nagi, so full of sadness and longing to understand. A piece of Omi's heartbreaks off every time it's given. "Is this a dream?" his voice is so sad, suggesting that he's never been loved, and Omi'd do anything to make it go away.

"No it's not." Omi replies, pulling Nagi closer to him. But even as he says it he begins to doubt himself. And he can tell his voice wavers because the look on Nagi's face intensifies. And his lovely lips open again, and Omi can tell they're trying not to quiver.

"It feels like it. I feel like this isn't real, that every time I walk out of this room it all disappears. Every step I take down that road eats a little piece off my memory until I'm not sure if this really happened. Is it in my head? Because then I see you as Weiss and it's different. The arrows flying at my face are real. The things are trying to kill me and they're coming from you. That's reality; that I can't ignore. But this, this is a dream."

Omi can only stare dumbfounded at Nagi, his jaw almost literally dropping open. What can he say to that? How can you explain that you continue to put up a façade for everyone day after day, because though you love them, there are things in life that that can't be rationalized?

He knows what would happen if they ever discovered this. Nagi is the enemy after all. Omi wouldn't be surprised if they turned on him, and declared him a traitor. Because that's what he was wasn't it? Fraternizing with the enemy? But he can't help it and he doesn't know why. And that's why they can never know. Because none of them know how much it kills to stand on the brink of happiness, and continuously be pushed back. None of them have suffered like he has.

"This isn't a dream." Omi repeats once his initial shock has subsided. But who are the reassurances for? Nagi doesn't buy it, that much Omi can tell. But he still feels the need to say it. If only to confirm the fact that he can feel the breath pass over his swollen lips, the hard wood floor beneath the blanket digging into his back as he fills his lungs. He knows he isn't sleeping. He also knows this isn't what Nagi meant.

"Then explain this to me."

A hesitation. "…I can't."

Why is this upsetting him this much? Omi never used to be one for extreme denial. That was always Ken's forte. He knows he's being childish now as he stands up, ignoring the way Nagi sighs as the sheet falls in a pool of fabric behind him. The only testimony of what they've done.

The silence grows deafening again while Omi dresses, feeling infinitely colder now that the fabric stretches across his arms and legs. He's stopped wearing shorts, that was a thing of the past. He left them behind somewhere along with his innocence.

He doesn't want to leave Nagi here, upset as Omi knows he is. He is upset, disappointed and probably on the edge of tears. That alone twists the knife in Omi's heart. This is the only place in the world Nagi would dare to drop his shields, something Omi used to take as the highest of compliments, but right now Omi isn't sure he wants to confirm what he already knows will be lying there behind midnight blue eyes.

And so he acts like the selfish thing he knows that he has become.

Omi leaves.

The door clicks behind Omi as it shuts. There are forty-five steps to the main foyer of the run down apartments. Fifteen more until he's out the door. If he looked back up now, he'd probably see Nagi's white face staring at him from the window. He knows it's there. He doesn't need to see. Instead his gaze focuses on the pavement below him, counting the number of stone slabs. He couldn't feel the chill back in the room, but apparently it's snowing. It doesn't matter as long as the line that dived the side walk still show.

Ten minutes later the Koneko appears in his line of sight, and Omi sinks to the ground on a bench near the streetlight. Suddenly it all makes perfect sense.

Nagi was right.

This is a dream.

The moment that Omi steps into that house, a place that used to be sort of a haven for him, it'll all disappear. Maybe their world isn't a dream in the sense of sleeping; it's a dream in the way of hope. That they can actually be together. That maybe the storybooks are right, and there will be a happy ending. But then, no. Happy endings are reserved for righteous heroes who save damsels in distress. Not for homosexual teenage murderers who slink around in the night.

When he first began to work with Weiss, Omi was convinced that the lives he took were to better the world, to rid the evil from the streets. He was young and oh so naïve. There's no such thing as black and white. He knows that now. There's always thousands of slight shades of gray. And where do he and Nagi fall?

By all definitions, he is evil. Nagi is evil. The house that looms in front of him is crawling with evil. He may paint the world white with lies and rationalizations but there is no way to escape it. The dream he's fabricated has been wearing away. It no longer stretches over the team he'd once made out to be his family. Nor does it cover the city he'd once known was full of as much beauty as darkness. Now it only echoes softly in that little room, a murmur of what it once was.

And finally, Omi truly knows what it means to be jaded. He knows what lurks behind the heartbreaking eyes of the only person he would do anything in the world for.

He understands.

There are 12 blocks in the space between the dream and reality.

It's taken him sixteen trips to find out.


End file.
